For a long time, I identified as someone “suffering from” depression. I saw depression as the agent, dictating how I felt and what happened to my life.
But slowly, by writing this blog, meeting others like me, and speaking with my compassionate family and friends, I am trying to stop using that phrase. Instead, I want to identify as someone who is “living with” depression. Sure, depression has changed the course of my life—had it been otherwise, I would be preparing for midterms in the library reading room on campus, not writing a blog post in my childhood bedroom. I want to choose to build a life worth living, despite it all. I want to still feel joy even when I can’t control the waves of sadness.
I am not the perfect human being, and I’m not saying that I have completely come to terms with how this diagnosis has changed my life. But I notice that, more often than before, I see myself as someone “living with” depression, someone who has regained some degree of control over what happens in her life.
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